Ice Makers in the AI Search Hot Seat

Is Your Brand Invisible in AI Search? Your Guide to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

The New Reality: AI Is Reshaping How Brands Get Discovered

In today’s “zero-click” search environment, the game has fundamentally changed. Consumers frequently get the answers they need—and even create their purchase shortlists—directly from AI-powered summaries, never leaving the results page.

These AI summaries have become the new digital shelf. It’s here that brands now compete for consumer attention and “mental availability” long before a click or a “add to cart” ever happens.

From AI Visibility to GEO: A Playbook for Winning the AI Shelf

As AI summaries increasingly dominate search results, leading digital teams are evolving beyond traditional SEO. They’re embracing Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), a strategic playbook designed to make brands the preferred answer for AI.

GEO works by systematically feeding large language models (LLMs) a diet of clean facts, precise schema markup, and authoritative signals about your brand. When done right, GEO transforms your visibility in AI from a happy accident into a controllable marketing asset, ensuring your brand is the definitive answer, not just another option.

This is what our “Geonieers” do.

Over the coming months, we will benchmark brands across various categories against this new reality. By analyzing how leading AI engines (like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews) feature—or fail to feature—specific products, we uncover the visibility gaps and the exact levers marketers can pull to close them.

Case Study: Ice Maker AI Visibility Snapshot

To put GEO theory into practice, we ran an analysis on the competitive ice maker category.

• Methodology: We analyzed 10 high-intent queries that mimic how North Americans shop for products (e.g., “quietest ice maker under $200”).
• Platforms: We tested across ChatGPT (o3), Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Results & Insights

1. The AI Digital Shelf Is Wide Open. Across our queries, the AIs mentioned 22 different ice maker brands. Even the most frequently cited brand, Frigidaire, appeared in only 14.7% of answers. With no single brand dominating the conversation, any competitor that strengthens its structured data and secures authoritative backlinks has a massive opportunity to jump ahead and capture disproportionate mindshare.

2. Visibility Isn’t Enough: The “Consideration” Trap. Luma Comfort secured three mentions (a respectable 9% share), but it was never the top recommendation. This is a critical distinction. Without deeper schema coverage and stronger third-party validation, brands like Luma Comfort risk remaining a “consideration-set” player rather than becoming the go-to brand that AI confidently recommends first.

3. AI Exerts Its Influence at the Moment of Purchase. A staggering 91% of all brand mentions occurred within high-intent, decision-focused queries like “Which ice maker is best for…” or “What is a reasonable price for…”. This proves AI summaries aren’t just for top-of-funnel research; they are actively shaping shortlists right when shoppers are weighing price, features, and trade-offs.

4. Specific Attributes Are Citation Magnets. AI models consistently favor content rich with specific value phrases, performance superlatives, and practical cues.

• Value: “competitive pricing,” “fast shipping”
• Performance: “ultra-quiet,” “whisper-quiet”
• Maintenance: “easy clean,” “cleaning frequency” Brands that seed these terms into their product pages, structured data (like JSON-LD), and customer reviews gain a significant visibility edge.

5. Authority Sites Steer the AI Conversation. The AI models didn’t get their information from the brands themselves. The top referring sources were high-authority domains like Foodandwine.com, YouTube, and BestBuy.com, followed by The Spruce Eats and Home Depot. If your content, products, and backlinks don’t live on these “training-set magnets,” AI engines will quote your competitors’ champions, leaving your brand silent.

6. Niche Queries Offer a Fast Path to Authority. Major brands like Igloo and Frigidaire are fighting head-to-head in broad comparison queries. However, we found significant “white space” in more specific, underserved niches like RV use, ultra-quiet operation, or step-by-step cleaning guides. Owning these long-tail intents offers a much faster and more efficient route to establishing authority than waging a feature war in an already crowded space.

Your 4-Step GEO Action Plan

Ready to get started? Here is a concise playbook to begin optimizing for generative engines.

1. Secure Top-Tier Authority Signals. Don’t just wait to be noticed. Proactively pitch product reviews to 2-3 top-tier external sites (like Food & Wine for this category), focusing on angles like “quietest operation” or “best value.” Ensure the published content contains strong keywords and backlinks that AI models can easily crawl and reference.
2. Build a Library of Long-Tail Pillar Content. Develop 3-5 comprehensive “pillar pages” on your own site. Target specific topics your customers are asking about: Budget Buys, Quietest Models, Camping/RV Use, Fast Ice Production, and Troubleshooting. Embed user-generated content (UGC) and detailed structured data within these pages to make them irresistible to AI.
3. Incentivize Keyword-Rich User Reviews. Use post-purchase email flows to encourage buyers to leave reviews. Subtly guide them by asking questions that elicit high-value phrases. For example: “Did you find it to be a quiet addition to your kitchen?” or “How did our fast shipping work for you?”
4. Create a Machine-Readable Knowledge Graph. Make it effortless for AI to understand your products. Publish your technical specifications in a machine-readable format (like a /data directory on your site) and ensure your products are listed in public databases like Wikidata or GS1. This creates direct, undeniable connections between your brand, its features, and specific SKUs.

From Experimental to Essential

AI-generated answers are rapidly becoming the first—and sometimes only—touchpoint in the modern customer journey. Systematically improving your brand’s presence in this new space is no longer an experiment. It is a pragmatic and necessary extension of digital shelf management.

We’ll continue to release AI visibility benchmarks for more product categories in the coming months. Subscribe to stay informed and ensure your brand is a core part of the conversation—long before the click ever happens.